Beverly Cleary

Probably as far away as you can get from David Foster Wallace is Beverly Cleary, author of, among others, the Ramona Quimby series. The 95-year-old author has sold 75 million copies of her children's books worldwide. 'What ultimately drove her to write for children, she recalled, was a book she noticed when she had a job in a children’s bookstore in the 1940s. In it, a puppy said: “Bow-wow. I like the green grass.” “No dog I had ever known could talk like that,” Cleary said. She wondered once again, as she frequently had while working as a children’s librarian, “What was the matter with authors?” Her conclusion: “I knew I could write a better book.” ' More...